Like Father, Like Son
by Saintsburden
Summary: Keller Dryson established himself as the the most notorious bounty hunter on the Outer Rim during the rebellion against the empire. This story picks up a few years after RotJ with Keller and his son, Lance. This is a prelude to Lance's story to come.
1. A Job's a Job

The sound of the cargo bay door whirring open drew the attention of the man seated at the table, a bottle and glass before him. Seated with his back turned to the door, Keller Dryson lifted his eyes slowly, using the half-empty glass to see the reflection coming toward him, responding with a wry grin. Entering the room with a box full of mechanical parts is a young man in his late teens with jet-black hair and a face streamed with sweat. The young man's eyes dart over to the table with mild curiosity but seeming preoccupation as he continues past the men and their gambling. "Did you get the blasters realigned?" The deep, scratchy voice of the Outer Rim's most notorious bounty hunter, Keller Dryson, asks in a voice that implies more aggravation towards the problem than an anticipation to have it fixed.  
  
"Yes, Father," the young man replies in a tone of annoyance that Keller hadn't automatically assumed that the job was done. "The coils had been burnt to the core, it's a wonder they didn't fall off before you landed." Setting the box down on a stool halfway across the room, the young man holds up a piece of metal with severe scarring. "I don't know why you use these junk parts," he says with the slightest touch of bitter return as he tosses the piece back into the box with little car.  
  
Turning in his chair to face his son, Keller shakes his head. "They've gotten me through some rough spots, so they're good enough for the Enterra," he says, indicating back to the ship just barely visible through the open cargo bay doors. "Besides, even those high-class parts don't hold up well to heavy blast fire." Rising from his seat, Keller pours the last of the bottle into the glass and raises it to his lips as his son snatches the piece he'd been searching for and begins to walk out of the room. "Lance..."  
  
What little momentum the young man had generated dies quickly as he stops and turns slowly on the ball of his foot to turn back around and face his father, his only response is an arch in the brow above one of his hunter green eyes. Now close enough to smell the alcohol in the glass and on his father's breath, Lance stands with his head cocked slightly to the side as he waits for the remainder of the sentence.  
  
"...Draka came by earlier, he has a job for me. Smuggling run through the checkpoints at Yavin 4. The pick-up is in two days." Tilting the glass and letting the smooth liquid burn its way down his throat, Keller seems more preoccupied with the drink than his son's reaction.  
  
Doing some quick figuring, Lance doesn't take long to fire an answer back. "But that means that you'll have to leave tonight! Aunt Remie's funeral is tomorrow!" A combination of shock and anger begin to trickle into the son's voice as he speaks, letting the memories fly in and out quickly. Though not really his aunt, Remie had earned the title by being near the only female influence the young man's entire life, save the occasional girlfriends of his father that had come and gone, some for months, others for only weeks or days.  
  
The reply comes after an extended pause involving a shrug and another drink. "A job is a job. The pay on this one is big."  
  
"Well, what am I supposed to do?"  
  
Now Keller begins to demonstrate his own sense of anger. "I don't know, Lance. Maybe you can actually get out and do something other than wasting my parts on that speeder bike of yours! You're nineteen years old, I'd think that you'd be able to take care of yourself once in a while."  
  
Lance feels his body shrink down from six feet to what seems to be like a mere few inches. Though aging visibly in some aspects, his father is still one of the most intimidating men that Lance has ever laid eyes on. The drink in his hand and in his system only makes for more of Keller's unpredictability. "Not like you've ever been around, anyway," Lance mutters through clenched teeth as he turns to walk away, but the boom of his father's deep voice and the strong hand on his shoulder stops him.  
  
"What did you say?" Keller growls as he sets the glass down on the table with added force, pulling his son back at an angle so that they face each other again.  
  
With a speed-of-hand that seems to catch his father off guard almost as much as the nerve of the action itself, Lance reaches up with his own forearm and bats his father's hand away, causing both their arms to fall back down to their sides as Lance takes a step back. "Nothing," he bitterly returns, adding the last part out of an ironic respect, "...sir. You need to get ready for your run. I'll unplug the druids and send 'em to the Enterra." Even with his disrespect, the sense of duty is instilled too deep within him to break the code.  
  
Still out of sync with reality due to his son's bold action against him, Keller stands for a moment in silence before the payoff for Draka's run floods back into his mind and extracts a smile. Before making his way over to the ship, Keller stops and picks up another bottle. 


	2. Dreams and Downfalls

It had all happened quickly enough. That night Keller had prepared to leave, going through what had become ritualistic after so many years of the routine. Securing his blaster pistol in his signature sash-style holster, he closed the door to his bedroom one last time and stepped out towards the open ramp onto the Enterra. After leaving the ground and taking their first step onto the metallic ramp, Keller's feet stop him in midstride as he looks back, his dark brown eyes narrowing their gaze as he hears the sound of metallic being searing together.  
  
The sounds, of course, were being generating by Lance while working on his speeder, a pastime that he had come to fill his hours with more and more with the advance of age. For a moment, Keller simply stopped to watch his son work. The small workshop of Lance's was frequented by sporadic bursts of light as he continued to work, stopping after a few minutes to lift his visor and wipe his brow. In this instant, Keller was almost tempted to step down from the ramp and try again at a conversation with his son—to leave on terms other than the argument that so reflected the majority of their relationship. Just as he opened his mouth to call out to his son, a droid's voice caught his attention from within in the ship. "Master Dryson, departure is eminent. Master Dryson, departure is eminent." Shaking his head, Keller took another step up the ramp. He's busy, anyway. Stepping onto the ship and punching the button to close the door, Keller sucked in his breath of the air of home.  
  
Kneeling down, Lance shook his head and sat visor down as he heard the roar of the engines of the Enterra firing to life. A few seconds later, the ship lifted off from the ground and corrected its bearing before thrusting forward into the dimming night sky and eventually fading off into the distance until it resembled another star and then disappeared entirely. By that point, Lance was standing where the ship had once been and staring into the sky, wondering why he cared.  
  
The next day begun just as it usually does for Lance Dryson. Up before the run rose, he had made a speeder run out to check the communication towers that served as his father's cover business if the powers that be ever decided to check up on the actions of the bounty hunter. Everyone knew his true occupation, though, making the cover story generally useless. Still, Lance found it another way to the pass the time. Back an hour after sunrise, Lance had spent some time repairing the one droid that his father did not take before cleaning up and attending Remie's funeral. Though she was the closest thing to a mother Lance could remember, he found himself not terribly upset during the short and poorly-attended burial. More than anything, he caught himself concentrating on his anger towards Keller for not being there.  
  
With a very long twenty-four hours behind him, Lance lays his head down to sleep and prepare for another day, his last conscious thoughts of his father's project whereabouts in the galaxy, provided that he is on schedule. The thought that his father never misses an appointed time flies through his head as dreams begin to take over.  
  
Meanwhile, the Enterra pulls itself out of hyperspace at the command of a droid, the great reduction in speed enough to awaken the one-man crew of the vessel. Wiping the sleep out of his eyes and stepping out of the cabin and sliding into the pilot's chair, Keller instinctively checks all of his systems, ensuring that he is on course and in the designated area. The checkpoints at Yavin 4 had gone very smoothly, but the true trick would be on the way home with the illegal cargo stored in the alternate fuel cell. In seeming empty space, Keller flips on his scanners to pick up the exact location of the "dead drop" cargo that was assigned to be floating in this section. Though he isn't quite sure what Draka wants with the ore, Keller finds the payoff enough to keep from asking too many questions. Now in his mid-forties, the bounty hunter has considering giving up the practice for a while now, but the temptation of a high payoff and the thrill of the job always seems to linger him back for just one more.  
  
_Lance's dream begins just as the next morning would. Rising out of bed, Lance leaves his room and crosses the hallway, surprised to find the door to his father's bedroom opened. Narrowing his gaze, the young man is confused by a small, bright light coming from in the room. Mesmerized, he takes a step forward._  
  
The small blip on his computer screen indicates the position of the load and calls for a turning of the ship to bring it into a visual range. Taking control of the ship from the droid, Keller takes a long, swinging right and brings the floating canister into view. Pulling the ship up as the slowest speed possible, the bounty hunter turned smuggler cocks his head to the side slightly at the sight of the strange markings on his target. Suddenly, he eyes grow wide as he realizes what lay in front of him. Accelerating quickly and trying to turn away, Keller pulls back hard on the controls as he does his best to pull the Enterra away from the electro-pulse bomb.  
  
_The light becomes so bright suddenly that Lance has to turn away. After a few seconds, he feels the light and its heat fade. Turning back to the contents of the room again, he is suddenly aware of an extreme cold and a choking sensation, as if all the air had been sucked out of the house. The silence is deafening as Lance realizes he is not alone in the room._  
  
Too late. The weapon's proximity sensor trips and a series of wires burn, causing the canister to explode and send out a shockwave that disables all electrical systems in its blast radius, including the systems on the Enterra. Now powerless, Keller unstraps himself quickly and bolts into the next room though the pitch-blackness of the ship, hoping that the back-up power has not been disabled as well. Though it won't be enough to jump into hyperspace, the backup would provide enough power for life support, short-range communication, some maneuvering, and possible use of the blaster cannons.  
  
_"Aunt Remie?" The larger woman's figure and smile are unmistakable. "What are you..." His voice stops as the angelic figure of the woman raises a finger to the young man's lips and quiets him. Taking a step back, she motions outside of the room and steps forward, causing Lance to follow in a confused daze. As she steps out of the house, the figure of Aunt Remie fades into nothing._

Throwing the switch once, Keller's head drops as nothing happens. Throwing it again, some hope is restored as the system flickers to life and then rests dormant again. Throwing it one last time while simultaneously throwing his body weight into the source, Keller is rewarded with the dim glow of the blue ship lights above him. Thinking that he now has time to try and recalibrate the main power of the Enterra, he feels life drain out of him an unmistakable sound—a much larger ship jumping out of hyperspace.  
  
_Stepping outside of the house, he finds the world not as it should be. Instead of the still dark of night, the world sits under two blood red suns with countless small moons orbiting them. For some reason, the sight causes him to shiver._  
  
Stepping back into the bridge, Keller's view quickly picks out two Alliance cruisers coming around on his starboard, escorting by at least three wings of fighters swarming around the hull of the larger ships. The X-Wings alone would be a decent match for the Enterra if the ship had full power, so in might-on-might combat he would have no chance. Seeing one wing of the fighters detach from their flight pattern, he watches helplessly as they drift closer to the Enterra. Turning to his droid, Keller barks out commands. "L-22, why don't you..."  
  
_Just outside of the house, at Lance's feet, are scattered parts. The sporadic placing of the parts becomes thicker and thicker until they form a massive pile, some of the bigger parts resembling the hull of a ship. The Enterra, he recognizes. Looking closer, Lance notices something amidst the pile of metal. Is that...a hand?_  
  
His voice trails off as he realizes that the droid, too, has been shut off by the power of the weapon that had gone off. It is in this instant that he begins to realize that all of this is a set-up. Cursing Draka, adrenaline begins to flow back through Keller's system. "If it's just to put a blaster shot in your head, Draka, I'll make it out of this." Stepping out of the bridge, he tears open a control panel on the wall and begins to frantically work to regain control of the ship's main power source. The X-Wings near the ship and open up a broadcast channel with the Enterra, ordering the captain to stand down and prepare to be pulled by tractor beam into one of the cruisers. After they receive no answer for a few minutes as Keller still works to regain power, one of the fighters follows the rules of engagement and fires a single blaster shot at the Enterra as a last warning to comply.  
  
_Suddenly a force crashes into Lance's shoulders and forces him to stumble backwards and eventually to fall as the pile before him starts to sink down into the ground. The hand, which had been lying dormant during this time, suddenly begins to grope around for something to hold onto, as if some last ditch effort to save itself._  
  
"Just a little more...there!" Throwing the primer to the main power, Keller is rewarded with the normal and much brighter white lights of the ship as he hears the sound of his droid coming back to life in the bridge. "L-22! On my word, get us out of here at full throttle! We're gonna have to burst right in between those cruisers so they won't fire there cannons, afraid of hitting each other!" Using a bar above the hatch, Keller lowers himself into the gunnery compartment, taking control of the blaster cannon. With his finger around the trigger, Keller spots the ship in the X-Wing formation in the position of wing commander. He would be the one to give the signal, so taking him out might give the Enterra the chance to escape the tractor beam.  
  
_Knowing nothing better, Lance dives forward and grabs the hand in his own, trying desperately to gain some leverage against the sinking mass. Slowly, he begins to feel his own body sinking down with it. As he tried to let go of the hand and save himself, he finds that the grip of the now ice-cold hand is too strong to break.  
_  
"Now! Go go go!!!" Feeling the engines rock back to life as the ship goes immediately in motion, Keller spins the blaster cannon around and aims at the ship he'd singled out. "Nice try, kid," he says with a grin as he pulls the trigger, but instead of the recoil of the blaster cannon firing, Keller is rewarded only with the sound of a whirring noise above him. The same horrifying results are repeated as the X-wings fire a barrage of blaster fire on the ship and circle it again, only a matter of seconds before the tractor beam kicks in now.  
  
_Suddenly the pile begins not to sink but to be lifted into the air. Again, Lance cannot break free from the horrible grasp, so he too is lifted into the air. After a few seconds he finds that he is no longer being pulled up, but is weightless in the air, his body floating freely above the ground as they drift up higher, towards the two suns._  
  
Reaching up, Keller jerks open the control panel of the blaster cannon and finds the coils burned beyond repair, more than likely a result of the single shot of warning from earlier. Thinking back to what Lance had told him the day before, Keller shakes his head as he realizes his fate now. 'Damn. You were right, kid." Shaking his head, he unhooks himself from the seat of the cannon.  
  
_Just as he feels that the hand will break the bones in his hand, the grip seems to loosen. As he looks closer, he finds that the hand is in fact slowly fading into nothing, just as the figure of Remie did what seems hours ago. Now free from all of this, Lance feels himself drifting slowly back down to earth as the mass becomes lost in the sky, where the suns are setting on the horizon. A strange sensation comes over Lance as the realizes that he does not want to be separated from the mass, the hand. Reaching out to touch it again, Lance jerks up and finds himself sitting in his own bed, drenched in sweat, no sound other than that of his own voice._  
  
Calmly walking back to the bridge, Keller goes through pressing the series of buttons that he'd never dream of having to us. With the pride of a captain in him instilled by his own father who had fought in the clone wars, Keller activates the sequence of commands that begins a three minute countdown on the Enterra, the inside of the ship flashing alarming red lights. Making his way back into the cabin, he bends down and extracts the half-empty bottle from his bag and sinks down in the floor with a defeated sigh. "Here's to you, kid," he says with a though of Lance, the only human in his life that had stayed around for more than two years, "may you be a better man that me." Taking a long, deep drink, Keller leans back against the cargo bay door and waits for his eyes to flash before his eyes like they say it will. As the seconds count down towards zero, he wonders if it will hurt.


End file.
